Kingsley Ogbuji

Nigeria, whenever it dominates global news, does so obviously for very negative reasons. Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the Al-Qaeda apologist who attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight 253 carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members as it approached landing in Detroit, Michigan on Christmas day, is embarrassingly, a ‘born-with-silver-spoon’ Nigerian. This is coming on the heels of leadership vacuum created by President Umaru Yar’Adua’s medical trip to Saudi Arabia which has crippled the wheels of government bureaucracy and rendered the nation rudderless.

The president travelled to Saudi Arabia because no hospital in Nigeria is deemed worthy to treat him. Apart from oil, which both countries have in enviable amounts, what other natural resources does Saudi Arabia have that Nigeria does not have? What makes the difference? Bad leadership and prevalence of corruption you say? I think so!

It’s been 49 years since Nigeria’s independence, yet we are crumbling behind those countries that started much later than we did. South Africa with all its high crime rate enjoys better global recognition, even though Nigeria helped liberate South Africa from the pangs of apartheid. Why have things fallen apart in Nigeria to the extent that Nigerians are even ashamed of their country and its leadership? More than 150 million people in Nigeria are being shortchanged and held hostage by bad leadership. Nothing is working! We produce crude oil, yet we queue up in long lines to get petroleum products. We sell electricity to neighbouring Cameroun and Niger, yet we cannot generate 6,000 megawatts for our local consumption.

We are world’s largest producer of cassava and we export cocoa, rice, beans, beef, yet we live in the midst of abject poverty and unremitting hunger. Our medical practitioners practising abroad are among the best the world can get, yet primary healthcare is non-existent. Our medical institutions are deplorable and dilapidated, and the equipment in them, decrepit and unserviceable. Our police force is adjudged to be one of the best in peace-keeping operations but at home, they are guilty of extra-judicial executions.

With Nigeria’s rating in corruption, its continuous notoriety in advance-fee fraud, religious violence, communal crisis and now, terrorism, what is there left for Professor Akunyili to rebrand? A country where the corrupt are discharged and acquitted while the poor go to the gallows of injustice is doomed. A country where convicted criminals are begged to deliver convocation lectures while the few, who worked to eradicate corruption, are hunted down and declared wanted will never see the light of prosperity. A country where political merchants trade with impunity people’s fortune and loot their commonwealth cannot see the twilight of progress and development. It is only in Nigeria that we hear of the president’s kitchen cabinet lying to the public without being called to question.

We rank top in corruption and are among the poorest all in the midst of religiosity and plenty. The “dividends of democracy” we have been expecting since 1999 have now become a mirage, and its use as a word has become a hackneyed slogan among deceitful politicians. Nigerians have never asked for too much in terms of the so-called dividends of democracy, all they ask for is just the basics. What can we really say are the dividends of democracy since 1999? Nigerians in diaspora are scared of visiting home, while the privileged home-based cannot sleep with their eyes closed courtesy of the menace of armed robbery and a thriving kidnapping business.

In the face of all these, the destiny of Nigerians lies in the hands of the suffering masses. The courage and ability of the masses to resist any attempt to desecrate their votes in 2011 will pave the way for a new Nigeria where the commonwealth will be for the good of all. But to watch in apathy the same greedy, unrepentant politicians steal our votes will simply nail the coffin of our doom as a people. Let me not assume that we are walking towards the 2015 disintegration prophesy of the CIA because, when things are falling apart like this, the centre can no longer hold.

Ogbuji sent this piece from Texas, United States